


In Harm's Way

by gayalondiel



Series: watsons_woes July 2011 challenge [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayalondiel/pseuds/gayalondiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dr Watson is wounded in the chase, Lestrade ruminates on the real reasons behind it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Harm's Way

**Author's Note:**

> watsons_woes LJ community posted a daily prompt challenge for July 2011 wherein you had to respond within 24 hours. These are my responses, so they are a little hasty and unpolished. Also damned weird.
> 
> July 1: Watson injury (any severity), from a different POV than Holmes. Originally posted 02/07/11.
> 
> Disclaimer: The Holmes characters fall in the public domain and are the creation of the wonderful Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No ownership is implied or inferred. This is done for love only.

It had not taken long.

Not that Lestrade had expected it to, but still, he felt a knife twist in his gut when he saw Dr Watson slumped against the wall, clutching his upper arm, blood seeping through his fingers. He nodded them urgently in the direction in which Mr Holmes had followed the thief. Lestrade hesitated, taking in the slightly too bright look in Dr Watson’s eyes.

“Is it bad?”

“No. Go! They will not be far.”

Lestrade gestured to one of his constables to stay and took off after Holmes.

* * *

He hadn’t seen Dr Watson until the memorial service. He had been to visit a couple of times and Mrs Watson had reported that he bore up well but was not yet up to visitors. Finally Mr Mycroft Holmes and Watson had wrung the details of the service into a shape approximating what Mr Holmes would have wanted and so they all had to meet in public. There he had been startled to see Watson, while seemingly physically healthy, looking somehow less than himself, as though a vital piece of his person had been stripped away. Mrs Watson clung to his arm and was disarmingly polite to everyone who sought to condole with him, a tower of quiet strength in her own way. It had reassured Lestrade to know that Watson had her on his side. And yet when he got him alone, one quiet sentence, whispered under the noise of the crowd, gave him chills.

“That note, Lestrade. I should have seen it, I should have known.”

He continued to meet Watson occasionally, keeping him in touch with affairs with his acquaintances at the Yard and sometimes consulting with him when he felt the need to be more Holmes-like in his work. Occasionally he ran into one or two, and just once a full swarm of the grubby youths who had followed Holmes’ coin and instructions, and now came to Watson with news and for medical help that he was too kind to take any pay for. Twice Lestrade crossed paths with the elder Mr Holmes paying a call on the doctor, seemingly having transferred his fraternal concerns to his brother’s best friend.

Slowly, over the months, Watson returned to himself, although the shadow of that loss was always behind his eyes. The day he drew Lestrade into his living room, laughing before either had spoken, handed him an extremely generous brandy and informed him that he was to be a father in a few short months, Lestrade truly believed that the wounds in his soul had more or less healed. He had given a sort of cheer and the two had sat, drinking and smoking and laughing, until you could forget that the man who had brought their acquaintance about now formed a gaping hole in both of their lives. Mrs Watson had appeared at the door briefly, improper though it may have been, to offer him a smile and a shared glance that spoke volumes. She too thought this would be the healing of her husband, and both of them delighted in that knowledge.

Three months later Lestrade spent a good fortnight dreading the headlines every morning, expecting to hear that the body of a doctor had been pulled from the Thames.

Eventually he thought it proper to visit, and more than that, could get over the dread of what he would find. Watson was a broken man. He told him in few words, propriety be damned, that he had found her, bleeding and frightened, that he had telegraphed for help and cried out to the maids for assistance and tired to keep both her and the child, and then just her, alive with the strength of his hands and the force of his will. That he had watched her slip away from him with every weakening breath. That he had cradled the cold body of his daughter in his arms for hours. That he could make it no-one’s fault but his own, because surely, surely he should have seen something.

He should have known.

Once more the remaining few rallied around, supporting him as best they good, and Watson did not die in the swirling cold water as they all half-expected. He put himself together again, returning to his practice work, receiving Mr Mycroft Holmes and Lestrade and patching the street youths back together as best he could. But the shadow behind his eyes was a constant, now, a whisper that told Lestrade that this man was irreparably damaged, walking the earth like a sleeper, waiting for... what?

* * *

They met back at the inn where the thief had been hiding, Holmes sweeping past Watson to return to the room and begin illustrating the final clues that confirmed his theory in absolute terms. Lestrade stopped in the doorway, listening intently and soon enough Watson appeared beside him.

“Dr Watson?” he muttered under the flow of Holmes’ narrative.

“I’m quite well,” confirmed the doctor, not taking his eyes from the man pacing the room and gesturing emphatically. Lestrade raised his eyebrows, looking pointedly at tear in his shirtsleeve, surrounded by a deep red-brown stain.

“Truly, Lestrade,” he said. “A flesh wound, nothing more.” But there was a light in his eyes, the light Lestrade had first seen when they found Dr Watson and the erstwhile late Mr Holmes standing over the body of one Colonel Sebastian Moran. Lestrade had caught the look, knew Holmes had missed it, and had been waiting for the resulting injury. He knew, without needing to be told, that Watson had abandoned his once-customary caution to the wind, had followed Holmes’ lead too close, and had paid for it with a knife in the arm. Lestrade was certain it would not be the last wound he sustained at Holmes’ heel.

The look in Dr Watson’s eyes was not the light of someone who had found what he needed and was complete once more. It was the light of someone who had lost everything twice, and now threw himself in harm’s way to prove he was alive.

Because he no longer knew any other way.


End file.
